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Saturday, September 11, 2010

Recycled Notebook Memo Holder

{June 6, 2010}

by Eileen Hull

There seems to be a never ending supply of 70-page spiral composition books around our house. I buy them by the dozen for 10 cents or so after the school supply feeding frenzy has subsided in September. My daughter was cleaning her closet and brought down a stack of them to recycle the other day. Wait a minute ... the backings on these would be perfect for some ScoreBoards memo pads! The ripping began, and I had a nice stack of notebook backs.

Using the Big Shot Machine, cut chipboard memo holder from ScoreBoards die. If the chipboard is fairly thin, you may have to score the chipboard by hand. See tip below.

Run chipboard through the Big Shot again with the Textured Impressions Embossing Folder. You will have to play around with placement, as the chipboard is bigger than the folder and will have to be sent though twice to cover the whole area with embossing.

With the white ink, cover the raised flower design and also ink around the edges of the memo holder.

Separate snap halves. Place one snap on back flap cover and sew on with quilting, upholstery or other strong thread or floss. Align other snap below and sew in place, making sure the two pieces meet right.

Place memo pad in folder. I adhere with two lines of double-sided tape to make sure the pad won't fall out.

Make handle by looping ribbon through slits and adhering ribbon ends to back side of ribbon where desired using double-sided tape.

Add ribbon flower embellishment and sew a pearl in the center.

TIP: Because I designed these dies to work with mat board, which is typically about 1/16" thick, the scoring blade may not engage if the material being cut is thinner than that. The cutting blade will cut the shape out, and scoring by hand only takes a second. Here's how I do it. Cut one template from mat board and lay the chipboard piece on top. Fold both pieces together, creasing the chipboard on each fold. Take the chipboard off and re-crease the folders on the lines. This also works well with paper.

Make up a batch of them to give as hostess gifts, party favors or to carry in your purse. Embellish with flowers, monograms or add a little bling. It's nice to have gifts "in the bank" for the times you just don't have that extra time to run to the store!

Hope you enjoyed the project today – it's quick to make and can be basically a free project – you just have to supply the sticky notes. I can also see these being made from soda cartons, legal pad backs and other recycled chipboard. More money left to buy dies :-)

I will be appearing today, June 7, on cool2craft.com at noon EDT with the final wrap-up of the ScoreBoards blog hop and some photos of cool ways to use my Create-A-Bow die from the Celebrations collection. I have two more lucky winners to announce! Hope you can stop by and say hi. I will be on the show again the following week, June 14, which just happens to be Flag Day, in a brand new segment called Too Cool! I will show how I took an inspiration picture and where I went with it (hint: you'll be seeing stars!).